merkleme

This is why taking part could be more important than 'winning'- If I'm trying to create a peer to peer application, which after all is part of the promise of Blockchain tech, than Jaan Tallinn is a pretty important guy to be aware of your team...

"Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian programmer widely celebrated for writing the peer-to-peer engines of Kazaa and Skype."

I've been keeping an eye on this, and a thought occured. The prize money isnt as important as taking part.

"It will be a transformative event for the industry with hundreds of great ideas feeding into groundbreaking teams, all competing and showcasing their work,"

With the list of judges, and their idea behind 'fans', I think this could transform the Ethereum eco-system.

Can't help feeling that they missed the most important part - Balls of steel, for when your favourite coin crashes and you know you must hodl!

Consensys seem to be behind all the interesting projects, can't help but think that they could go and dominate the blockchain market over the coming decades. I look forward to the day when software isn't rolled out country by country - "I tried to go through the process. It asks me for an e-mail address, but I’m from UK so I can’t proceed as it is currently limited to the U.S."

I read an interesting article a while ago which as its tl;dr stated:

Mobile money transformed Kenya. Rural Kenyans prefer to pay more, but have Mpesa’s convenience (Mobile Money competitors are cheaper). Fees could reduce drastically, if Bitcoin is used. Safaricom sees Bitcoin as competition, but competition is good for the poor end user. Western news about Kenya can be misleading. Foreigners starting a business in East Africa tend to have a better chance of success if their model is not solely based on the local market.

http://www.coinscrum.com/2016/01/12/bitcoin-competitiveness-...

Cant help but feel that Herzog is going out of his comfort zone with 'Lo and Behold'. For me, he is at his best when looking at nature and in particularly Human Nature. His documentary Grizzly which the article mentions ends with his voice over “I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I can see only the overwhelming indifference of nature”, highlights his pursuit for understanding of why we do what we do. This is not to say that I wont watch Lo,I'm sure he'll discover the humanity of our technology.

Thats quite an impressive list for a jury. I had a quick look at the 'ideas' board. All of the ideas seem to be blockchain based (mainly on Ethereum), is there policy on what sort of ideas they except?

I just went to their 'ideas' page - they actually have 175, I only read the first few and 2 looked very promising: Journalism trust system & Peacemaker Unated Nations 2.0 Cool stuff. I'll keep my eye on them

Now this, if done right, could accelerate the blockchain ecosystem. Some of the ideas mentioned in the article will be great if they make it to fruition - peer to peer insurance and a global water ledger!

Just got around to watching the lecture. Fascinating, thanks for posting.

The standout sentence for me: "Because it supported the soul of Silicon Valley, the generations of tinkerers and builders who started small." Starting small is not what I associate with SV!

The same reason being trotted out for banning encryption, yet reports keep emerging that terrorist don't use these sort of apps.

I think this should be seen as wealth creation. A novel thing in this day and age.

Thank you, thats exactly what I meant.

Great essay, and a mantra to live by - "If it is possible to cut a word, cut it."

I must admit I was surprised to read how many women there were working in prominent positions back in the 80's at Apple. Jobs was truly a pioneer.

Thats it, I'm no longer going to strive to be the best...just better than the rest will do.

Whilst the article makes some descent points, namely its pretty hard to buy the track if you don't already own BTC/ETH,I cant help feeling the writer is coming at it with a pretty negative agenda.

There's a 10 point check list that I'll be copying from now on, thanks.

"This is egregious stupidity". That aptly describes the ABS from what I hear. Now where do I get one of these bots from.

Agreed, therefore we will never fully know the truth and details of this epic story - Cue Hollywood movie, in 25 years time ;)

I must say, having read the London Review of Books article, The Satoshi Affair, I have far more belief that this actually could be Satoshi... A foul mouthed, quick tempered Aussie isn't quite what I had imagined, but thats life. If you haven't read it, and have the time (its quite a long read) I do recommend it. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/andrew-ohagan/the-satoshi-affai...

Thanks for clearing that up.

Wow, thats pretty staggering. I'm sure I read an article (maybe just a tweet) by Andreas Antonopoulos stating that by complying to KYC/AML that they left themselves more vulnerable to this hack.

But I thought Bitfinex was a global exchange... Does an exchange just need to have a few US customers to face US lawsuits?

This brings back memories - 1985, Donna Haraway